Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ethics. Show all posts

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Practicing Kindness

Being kind is the secret to being happy and healthy. Would you know why?
Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

That morning, like most others, the train was packed. A lot of impatient people complaining about everything and everyone made the atmosphere not only stuffy, but also unbreathable.

It was when, with great difficulty, an elderly woman entered the vehicle and leaned on the seats as she could. The predictable happened as an elderly person enters crowded public transit: most of those seated sleep as quickly as possible.

However, a six-year-old boy, nudged his father for permission to leave the place where he was. The father, indifferent, told him to stay seated. But the boy, aloud, invited her to come and sit in his place.

An awkward silence ensued in the collective, while the lady, gratefully, took the seat offered to her.

Kindness and Happiness

We have observed that, in the midst of countless possibilities of choice, those who opt for cooperation and ethics build healthier and more lasting relationships.

Being kindness a form of love, studies have shown that kind people increase their happiness because this virtue is linked to the gene that releases the hormone responsible for well-being, dopamine.

A popular saying says that kindness breeds kindness.

Kindness turns out to be contagious too, motivating others to be equally kind. When we are kind to others, we contribute to making the environment in which we live better.

Kindness is also a form of attention, respect and love. Kind people show courtesy, are polite and attentive making their relationships more human and irradiating those feelings to those around them.

Kindness and Health

Another benefit of being kind is that due to our pre-disposition to help others, we are likely to improve our mental health. Our immune system tends to be better, because there is a direct relationship between well-being, happiness and health.

In other words, when we are kind we help and care for others and for ourselves.

Putting ourselves in the other's place is always the best way to act. By being attentive to the needs of other, we conquer the awareness that what makes us happy and make others happy too.

Final Thoughts

Let us be kind giving our best to others and we will see how more complete and happy we'll be.

As kindness stems from the awakening of conscience, when we are willing to develop this virtue we also gain joy, lovingness, affability, friendship, tenderness, gratitude, respect, tenderness and tolerance.

The gesture of kindness is undoubtedly a big step towards changing a situation of neglect, indelicity or indifference this world so much needs.

Think about it!

Adapted from Momento Espírita, originally published on October 07, 2017.

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Sunday, December 20, 2020

Planting and Harvesting

Could you explain why we suffer? Could you explain why some suffer more than others?
Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

According to the dictionaries, freewill is the possibility to decide, to choose according to one's will, free from any conditioning.

And that is how Divinity - the supreme intelligence of the universe - allows us to conduct our existence. To make decisions in our lives we only depend on our own judgment, on our personal analysis, on confronting our own conscience.

The Divine Providence, in an educational way, provides us with the opportunity for choices. And, for the sake of justice, it offers us, as a learning experience, the full consequences of our actions.

That is how the judge will answer for what he does in the courts. The executive will account for the management of the resources under his responsibility. The public manager will face consequences proportional to the quality of his actions. The teacher will be responsible for the good or bad made during the course of the profession. The employee will be considered for the quality of his actions and conduct.

We are free to make our decisions

We are free to make our decisions. However, once they are executed, we link ourselves to them and become either victims or beneficiaries of them. We may act in any way we believe is appropriate or convenient but we will have to account for everything we do.

Nobody deceives the all-seeing Divine Justice, from the insignificant to the most expressive acts. Erroneous attitudes, even those hidden from men, those that we believe we have managed to circumvent human justice, do not go unnoticed by the Divine Justice. Therefore acting positively, ethically, is a matter of wisdom. All the good that we do, even if silently and anonymously will be counted in our personal accounts.

For this reason, every difficulty that we face now are nothing more than debts of the past. And they reach us now because the Divinity understands that we have the conditions to pay them off. Thanks to this mechanism designed by God - which is always just and correct - we are provided with the chance to repair previous mistakes.

Final Thoughts

Out of kindness and in favor of our balance, the Heavenly Father offers us to forget our criminal past, so that we can better face its consequences. The understanding of Divine Justice, a lucid, reason-based faith twill give us encouragement to continue our journey.

We are heirs of our actions. Nothing that happens to us is due to divine punishment, heavenly revenge, or forgetting the loving and good Father. Our misfortunes are the consequences of not observing the law of love and they are an invitation to reflection and learning, so that love, effectively, establishes itself in our intimacy.

In this light, we will understand pain as a blessing, a cheater of our lives. It will lead us to higher levels of evolution.

Adapted from Momento Espírita, originally published on June 13, 2015.

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